Thursday, June 05, 2008

How to Lower your Scores by Pitching the Ball with PinPoint Accuracy


Imagine: You've missed the green with your approach shot to the right, and now you have a bunker blocking the green. Your only realistic chance of saving par is hitting a great pitch shot that stops close to the pin allowing you to one-putt the green. Over the next few days I'm going to teach you much of what you need to know in order to lower your golf scores dramatically by learning how to pitch the ball correctly.

As you may know, the short game is by far the quickest way to lower scores. Everyone can improve in this area of the game, because it doesn't require as much athletic ability or flexibility as a full golf swing.

Lesson 1 will be on the setup. You should see immediate improvements from this setup alone. It has worked wonders for my students for years.

Pitching Lesson 1

The following screenshots are directly from our upcoming pitching video. In this golf lesson we will take you through our unique pitching setup, and explain how our setup will ensure more solid impact by automatically creating a steep swing angle. The steep swing angle will allow you to get maximum height, and minimum roll when the ball hits the green.

There are 3 parts to our setup. All of these setup components are built specifically to give you a steep swing angle automatically.

The 3 components to the correct pitching setup:

  1. Ball Position
  2. Weight
  3. Hand Position

I have outlined the major pieces of each component below.

1. Ball Position

When you are learning how to pitch the golf ball correctly you want to start by placing the ball in center of your stance for every shot. The reason for this is that it will give you consistency in the beginning. As you get more experienced, we teach you in the video how to move the ball more forward in your stance. Moving the ball forward in your stance will give the ball added height. If you want to hit flop shots, you want to place the ball more forward in your stance.

So in the beginning, place the ball in center of your stance.

2. Weight

You want 70% of your weight on your front foot when pitching the ball. The most important part of this, is that you need to keep the weight on your front foot during the entire swing. Never transfer any weight to the rear foot when pitching the ball. You want the weight forward, because it forces you to come into the golf ball crisp. This will help you stop hitting behind the golf ball when pitching (the most common problem in pitching).

3. Hand Position

As you move your weight forward to your front side, your belt buckle will naturally move towards the target slightly. After this happens, you need to adjust your hand position so your hands are directly in front of your belt buckle. Again, this is done to promote a steep swing angle this move forces you to hit downward on the golf ball instead of "scooping" it. Most players think they have to "scoop" the ball in order to get added height on the ball. Our unique method lets the loft of your golf club put loft on the golf ball automatically.

Conclusion

As you can see, pitching the golf ball successfully is a mixture of art and science. You should be able to take this information and become a short game player immediately. Having said that, the setup is only the first component in the process. I will be following up in the next few days with more information on the backswing and downswing.

Please don't neglect this extremely important aspect of your game. I'll be in touch soon with more info like the above.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

David Nevogt writes golf instruction material that helps golfers of all levels reach their full potential and lower their scores. David is the author of "The Simple Golf Swing" which guarantees to have you shooting 7 strokes lower in only 1 week from today.